What is IT engineer Soham Parekh story, why everyone in Silicon Valley talking about it: Full story explained

India Today

4 days ago

Moonlighting is almost an open secret in the IT industry, particularly in India where software developers and IT engineers are often looking to earn in dollars along with their (not that well-paid) Indian salaries. The trend accelerated after Covid and when remote working became more acceptable. Now, the issue has ignited a fierce debate across the IT industry, from Silicon Valley to Bengaluru. All thanks to Soham Parekh, a young IT engineer whose story seems so over-the-top and ridiculous that it doesn't seem real. advertisementAnd it might not even be real, although by now we have seen Soham Parekh, or at least posing as him, on a popular tech podcast, as well as having his name referenced in multiple places on the internet going back several years, including on a Facebook developer blog. Yet, it is also true that his story is ridiculously over the top. So, what is this story and who exactly is Soham Parekh?How it all startedThe name of Soham Parekh became buzzword earlier this week when Suhail Doshi, co-founder and former CEO of the analytics company Mixpanel, posted on the social media platform X, accusing Parekh of simultaneously working for as many as 34 startups, many of which were backed by startup accelerator Y Combinator. Now, Doshi is a fairly well-known name within the tech community in Silicon Valley. So, when he says something it reaches a lot of important people in tech, including founders and tech influencers.
Post on X by Sohail
In his tweet, Doshi had revealed that his company had briefly hired Parekh but terminated his employment within a week after discovering his overlapping commitments.Doshi's posts went viral, sparking a wave of reactions and prompting several other startup founders to come forward with similar experiences. One such founder, Marcus Lowe of productivity app startup Create, claimed that while Parekh had demonstrated strong technical skills during the interview process, he soon began showing signs of irregular availability after being hired. Upon further investigation, Lowe discovered GitHub activity suggesting Parekh had been contributing code to another company, Sync.so, during hours he had claimed to be on personal leave.'His attendance was spotty, and when we looked into it, we found GitHub commits to other startups during hours he was supposed to be off,' said Lowe. 'It was a huge waste of time—such directly immoral behaviour felt worth speaking out about.' He described Parekh's conduct as 'deeply concerning for small startups relying on full-time commitment.'Another employer, Andriy Mulyar, CEO of Nomic AI, also confirmed Parekh's previous employment at his company. Mulyar stated that Parekh's identity and involvement had been verified following his public statements on X.Many employees from Sync.so also admitted that Parekh's involvement with several companies at once, despite him failing to mention this role during hiring processes at other firms. Several founders argued that Parekh's simultaneous employment wasn't just a contractual breach — it felt like a personal betrayal.advertisementWe don't really know how many companies Soham applied to and at how many companies he did work for. But one tweet says that in the last 4 years, Soham has cracked interviews at over 70 startups. This led to talk that Soham was not a scammer, he was a genius who could crack difficult tech interviews and LeetCode tests again and again. Similarly, chatter suggested that he was earning hundreds of dollars every month and that he was actually farming out work to junior developers that he hired in India.
So, who is Soham ParekhAs the conversation grew, people started wondering if Soham is even real. So, the digging started. Many tech community leaders started trawling their emails and messages and discovered that in the last few years they had come across Soham's job pitches and outreaches. Many said that they had considered him hiring but eventually did not. Many said they had exchanged messages with him. It seemed that Soham was everywhere, in every company's mailbox, in the DMs of every tech founder who was raising money from Y Combinator. advertisementOther signs of Soham's internet presence were also discovered. Most significant of them was his 'interview' with Meta Blogs as he worked at Major League Hacking Fellowship while he was still in the final year of his graduation, most likely in Georgia Institute in the US if we go by Soham's resume that has been shared online. 'I am a software developer, currently in my final year, creating open source projects and writing about software development,' Soham told Meta Blogs. Interestingly, reports note that Georgia Institute has denied having anyone named Soham Parekh in their classrooms.But for now, let's go by all the information that is available so far. Although, some have suggested that 90 per cent of Soham's resume is fake. Irrespective, here are some 'facts'.
Screenshot of Soham Parekh's resume shared by Sohail on X.
advertisementSoham is reportedly a 26-year-old engineer, now probably based in the US. But before moving to the US he was likely in Mumbai, doing his bachelors in IT engineering from University of Mumbai. Soham appears on camera, offers his side of the storyWith the buzz growing, Parekh recently broke his silence in an interview on the tech show TBPN. He confirmed the claims: 'It is true,' he admitted, acknowledging that he had misled multiple companies about his employment status. 'I'm not proud of what I've done. But I had to do this out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances. No one really wants to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do it.'Parekh has also claimed that he had personally managed all his roles, without taking any assistance from AI tools or other engineers. Originally from Mumbai, he revealed that he had aspired to study in the US as early as 2018, but financial constraints had delayed his plans. He eventually moved in 2020.In the US, Parekh reportedly faced mounting bills and limited opportunities. This, he claimed, pushed him towards over-employment. According to Parekh, it wasn't greed but desperation that motivated him. 'I did what I had to do to survive.' At his peak, he reportedly earned between $30,000 and $40,000 a month from several early-stage companies, none of which were aware of the others.advertisementStartups questioning ethics around moonlightingParekh's case has once again drawn attention to the practice of over-employment in Silicon Valley as well as in the Indian IT sector, where individuals secretly hold multiple full-time roles, particularly while working remotely. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an estimated 5.5 per cent of Americans hold two or more jobs. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise of remote work has made it easier for individuals to conceal such overlapping job commitments.While the practice of working for multiple companies is not always illegal, it often violates employment contracts and raises serious concerns around productivity, trust, and fair compensation.Parekh is now working with just one employer Though Parekh has publicly acknowledged his involvement in over-employment, he has now reportedly accepted a single-role position at Darwin, an early-stage startup. In a public statement, Darwin's founder and CEO Sanjit Juneja expressed support for the embattled engineer: 'Soham is an incredibly talented engineer, and we believe in his ability to help bring our products to market,' Juneja reportedly told Techcrunch.In a follow-up post on his confirmed X account, Parekh wrote: 'I've been isolated, written off, and shut out by nearly everyone I've known and every company I've worked at. But building is the only thing I've ever truly known, and it's what I'll keep doing.' He added that he has ended all other employment engagements and is now working exclusively with Darwin.- Ends